By C.J. Hirschfield
On the day of this writing, 13,464 trays of strawberries were harvested in California, the state that produces 83 percent of the strawberries grown in the U.S. Who picks them? Kids as young as 12.
Poster by Maribel Martinez and Yen Tan
By C.J. Hirschfield
When the feature documentary Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives was released in 1977, it rocked my world. I already loved documentaries, but this one–widely considered to be the first feature film about lesbian and gay identity–by gay people, quickly became a symbol of the emerging gay rights movement. I was living in glorious San Francisco at the time, where the film premiered at the Castro Theater. Directed by six people collectively known as the Mariposa Group, it took five years, and over two hundred interviews with gays, to complete the historic project.
by C.J. Hirschfield
The first public performance of San Francisco’s renowned Gay Men’s Chorus took place in 1978 at an impromptu memorial at City Hall for pioneer gay rights advocate and city supervisor Harvey Milk and mayor George Moscone, who had been assassinated earlier that same day. It’s worth noting that they performed a religious song: “Thou, Lord, Hast Been our Refuge.” The tens of thousands of mourners had marched to City Hall from Castro Street.
Since that time, the world’s first gay chorus has performed all over the world.
The Other Side of the Lost Continent Returns With A 30s French Comedy So Good You’ll Wonder How It Ever Became So Forgotten Continue reading
A Date with Double Exposures: Don Malcolm’s “Gallic Evangelism”
Reaches A Fever Pitch As He Aims for 101 French Noirs in 5 Years…
AS TOLD TO OWEN FIELD
An increasing fraction of the “noiristas” who travel from the Castro Theatre (lone dowager of San Francisco’s once-abundant “movie palace” tradition) to the upstart Roxie are grasping the odd, counterintuitive idea that their favorite “genre” (don’t let’s start THAT argument here!) might have a different history than the one commonly purveyed.
Thanks to the exhaustive and exhausting Toronto International Film Festival and the equally intense Berlin Film Festival, as well as the more tightly curated Telluride Film Festival, I can happily recommend seven films that are playing in this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), April 10-23 in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland.
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